


The Daughter's Dawn

by beinlausi



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Christianity, Cultural Differences, Disability, Disabled Character, F/M, Middle Ages, Osteogenesis Imperfecta, Paganism, Physical Disability, Ragnarssons - Freeform, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Slow Burn, War, it's a slow burn, rating will go up when i write the juicy bits
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-17 12:51:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12366177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beinlausi/pseuds/beinlausi
Summary: King Aelwulf's most reckoning weakness was this; he saw people as things that God would save. Eda had committed sins. She'd shamed. She'd stolen. She'd murdered.But Eda, she didn't want to be saved; she wanted to fight.





	1. prologue.

The night Eda of Eoforwic decided to burn down her father’s chapel, she hadn’t been angry or drunk. She had been desperate.

Burning down the church was Eda’s last resort; she’d already committed atrocities, but her father kept _forgiving_ her. When she’d stolen her uncle’s longsword, he’d brushed it off, and when Eda had slammed the butt of it into her brother’s nose and crushed the cartilage, he swore to his people upon God that it was playfulness amongst siblings. Even when Eda had slipped belladonna berries into the food of the Queen’s favourite hound, and when she held a dagger to the throat of her father’s beloved mistress, he forgave her. The King’s biggest weakness was that he saw his family as people that _God_ would save.

But Eda, she didn’t want to be saved; she wanted to fight.

It was almost midnight when she pressed into the darkness of the monstrous castle’s acrid underbelly. Shadows crept along the stone walls, and their coldness clawed at her cheeks like talons of ice. The pale hairs on her arms stood upon their ends as her father’s warriors did, a chill settling on her skin as she glided over the blackened floor that she knew was marred by blood. Life’s only sounds were the pitiful whimpers of the King’s prisoners, with their ankles bound to the floor with chains, and collars made of iron around their necks. Not even the rats dared to venture to the cells.

A single guard was posted, standing like a pillar by a door that was creaking on blood-rusted hinges. Torchlight lit a radius around him, casting an out-of-place orange glow across a youthful but hardened face. He had a pattering of hair across his top lip that looked like whiskers, and his skin was weathered for a man so young.

Eda was scantily clad in nothing but her nightslip, and she could see Edvard’s face pale and flush as he drank her in. For a girl of nineteen, she was taller than most men and almost as broad. She had a softness about her – wide hips, a plush chest – but she was wicked. It showed on the planes of her face, just how wicked she was.

Edvard stepped aside, his eye’s forward as the King’s daughter pulled the locking mechanism and slipped into the old stables with a bag slung over her shoulder.

Eda was sly, like a snake, and within a few minutes she had let herself into the bitterly cold church and set her bag down just inside the door. It was darker than she’d ever seen it, often a tangerine orange from the warmth of the hearth, but now it was a moonlit blue. Only a few pews separated her from the altar, adorned with a leather-bound bible and decorated generously with gemstones and gold. A few steps from the treasure was a basin made of stone, filled two inches or so with water that looked almost crystalline. Eda felt a twinge of something – guilt? – as she stared into the holy water that had cascaded over her tiny ears when she had been a baby, but if the Christians had learned anything from the pagans, it was the importance of sacrifice. And this, this was the ultimate sacrifice.

Her father could not forgive this.

Eda crouched down on the icy stone floor, untied the bag, and began to work.

It was everything she needed: a plentiful pile of firewood and a little cask that was full with oil, along with a poor excuse for the Cross, a few matches, and a bunch or two of dried kindling. She laid the contents up on the altar, settling the tinder between the wood, and uncorked the cask. Eda let it drip onto the altar a few times before she let it flow onto the wood, and then moved to the few pews to douse them in swine’s fat. The church stank of pig and prayer, and as she moved back to the altar, she came face to face with the Bible.

Eda felt small beneath the crucifix that hung above the altar, and even in the darkened room, she could feel the statue’s gaze on her as she lifted a match. She almost mustered up the courage to ask her father’s God for forgiveness, but found herself revelling in the thrill of her sins. It was exciting, defying her Christianity like this. Defying God.

She struck the match against the stone floor, letting it lick up the wood like a feral creature until it’s teeth gnawed at her fingertips. In a moment of daring, Eda lifted her colourless eyes to Jesus’ stone ones and let the match fall to the kindling. Eda watched in a wicked kind of awe as the fire caught onto the dried grass and consumed it like a hound, before it tasted the twigs and began to grow. She couldn’t help but laugh in madness as the flames took to the oil like something Eda had never seen. She couldn’t help but hold out her makeshift Cross until it caught in the blaze.

The Bastard Princess of Eoforwic strode once again through the pews as the fire engulfed the altar and dripped to the floor like it had become liquid and stormed to the first pew. She could feel the heat through her nightdress as it charred the wood, and she turned to take one final look at the chapel before she tossed the Cross into the oil that flooded the floor.

Eda licked her splitting lips as she took a step back into the courtyard to admire the beast she had birthed, the square aglow with firelight. When the spit and crackle met with the waning wails of the wolves, Eda found it hard not to grin. As Eoforwic began to wake with her blazing dawn, Eda never imaged that the Vikings would too.


	2. chapter one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I really hope you enjoy this, and I'd really appreciate if you left a comment for me!

 

Panic burst through the walls of Eoforwic like a geyser, the air becoming thick with smoke and dust as the fire burned from roof to roof and filled the city with flame. A goat bleated in terror as fire caught its coat and singed its skin until its white body had turned black. Eda was frightened for the first time in her life, her nightdress tattered and burnt and her legs turned ashen with soot. 

Horses roared and screamed as mounted devils tore through the muddied streets of Eoforwic and loosed arrow after arrow into Aelwulf’s subjects like they were nothing but playthings. Men with twisted beards and hair to the middle of their backs threw axes and knifes and slashed at women and children with swords turned crimson with blood. Stallions tore past Eda in every direction, sweat foaming on their shoulders and sodden dirt caking their flanks as the city turned to Hell around them.

“Eda!”

Another horse shot past Eda like an arrow, a sword coming down on a man that was broad and hard, but his head fell from his shoulders like a rock pushed from a cliff. Around her, the city was razed and filled with bloodied Northmen and the bodies of Saxons, and Eda wondered if this was the end. If this was Hell.

“Eda!”

Eda turned on her heel, scanning the throng of warriors for the one voice she knew among hundreds that she didn’t. There must have been thousands of heathens, each turning to a Saxon with a roar that rivalled the bellows of lions. A chariot crashed through the direful mass of bloodied men, crushing men under hoof and wheel and leaving bodies in its wake. Eda could barely jump from its path as the reddened chest of a white horse slammed her to the ground like she was a child’s doll. She felt a jolt as her wrist snapped under the weight, and couldn’t help but scream as the chariot barrelled away from her.

“Eda, come on!”

She felt her brother’s hands settle under her armpits, and she struggled under his grip as he pulled her out of the mud and out of the fray. He had dropped his sword at her feet, and his face was marred by his own blood, the front of his skull split and gushing with pink flesh that Eda realised was his brain. He continued to pull her as she howled and fought, lunging for his longsword and slamming the butt of it into his shoulder. She would fix this. She would kill them all.

Archie growled and bared his teeth, crashing into the mud as his sister swung and slashed at anyone who dared to come near them. The sword has heavy and Eda was not as strong as the men, but she had the will of a bear and the cunning of a fox. She needed to learn.

“Eda, father needs us!” Archard spluttered as he fumbled for a foothold, the mud and slop sucking his boots into the earth. She yelled, somehow more vicious than any Viking, her eyes hazed and her blood boiling with adrenaline. Blood splattered her face as she cut through men that seemed to be twice her size, and her hair became matted with mud as horses shot past and caked her with dirt that kicked out of their hooves. “Eda, please!”

“Archie, go!” She screamed, helping him to his feet and pushing him away from her. She would save him. It was her fault.

“No, Eda, father needs us! He needs to abdic-“

Eda cried out in heart agony as an axe perched itself in Archard’s neck and split his throat like it was dough. His knees gave out, the bones landing in the mud with a sickening crack that made her stomach churn and bile rise into her throat. She wanted to be sick.

“Archie,” Eda held back a sob that wrecked her chest, sinking down into the mud as chaos enveloped her. “No, no.” Her heart was thundering in her chest, her nightdress doused in her brother’s blood as it gurgled from his throat and seeped into the ground.

_No, not my Archie,_ Eda wept, clinging to him like she had when she was a child and running her fingers through his copper hair. Eda remembered when King Ælle had mistaken them for twins. They had the same grey eyes and speckled cheeks, the same broadness, the same full lips and broken nose, the same wit, the same courage. They didn’t leave one another’s side, even when their sins caught up with them.

The click and rattle of a chariot met her ears, and Eda pulled out of her lull to look at the King of the Northmen as he cut down man after man and spread the blood of her friends. He had a smile on his face as if it was a game, as if he _liked_ to murder.

The Bastard Princess leaned down to give Archard’s blood-soaked forehead a final kiss, before she left him. He had said that their father needed them. Needed her. It hurt her soul, but she couldn’t look back at him as she ran through the plundered city of Eoforwic with tear-streaked cheeks, and she ran until the stone of the castle floor had rubbed the soles of her feet raw.

“Father!”

Her ailing King barely looked up at her from his throne, his gaunt cheeks pallid and devoid of colour as he searched for Archard in the space behind her. The longsword she had taken from him was dragging across the stone, and it fell with a crash as she dropped to her knees.

“Please, father, forgive me,” She muttered quietly, trying to meet Aelwulf’s eyes as he drank in the blood-wet sword and Eda’s crooked wrist. Her nightdress was so tattered that you could almost see all of her; how her knees were scraped and bleeding, how her skin was blackened with soot and mud. “I wanted to keep him safe, but he did not listen. I am sorry, father, please forgive me. I did not mean to cause such chaos.”

King Aelwulf’s colourless eyes lifted to meet hers, “My daughter, quiet,” He raised a hand, and his guard stepped forward to help him to his feet. “Kneel with me.”

Eda shuffled forward, sobs shaking her chest as she watched her father move down the stairs from the throne. She was confused, watching her father move on fragile bones and hearing them click as he knelt on a pillow. Her brow furrowed as Bishop Edric moved to stand between them, his bible in hand and a scroll of parchment in the other.

“Father?” Eda questioned, wiping her wet cheeks as she cocked her head and took in his frail appearance.

King Aelwulf was elderly now, living nearly sixty winters, and it showed on his weathered face. Where he once had flushed cheeks, he now had grey skin that looked like boiled leather. His hair was white and haggard, his beard unkempt. Broad shoulders sagged and once strong arms were wiry and thin.

Eda could almost feel the way her fingers used to braid his hair, so long and red – like fire – and how those shoulders used to hold her up and take her to what felt like the tops of the world. She remembered how he used to laugh with his plump stomach and hold her close to his heart like the cross he wore on his chest. She remembered how he had taught her to write, and how he had read to her before she slept. She remembered how he had treated her like a princess when she was nothing more than a bastard.

“I am abdicating, Eda,” He grunted in pain as he rested himself fully on his weak knees. “In your favour.”

“Father, you can’t.” Eda grimaced, looking up to his guard as if the man could stop him. Had the King begun to go mad?

The sound of a ram beating the wooden doors of the villa gave Eda a start, and once again she felt bile begin to rise in her throat. They were here, they were coming for them. They would kill them without a second thought.

“You are my daughter, Eda.” He started, looking up to Bishop Edric as he began to flip through the Bible to pray. “This is your throne. You will take it back from them.”

“Father, I can’t. I do not know how to rule!” She tried to reason, looking from Edric to her father and back again. “You would put your throne in the hands of a bastard girl, father? Nobody will rally behind me.”

“They will rally behind any child of Aelwulf over their pagan King, daughter. You will ride to Caledonia, to my sister.” Aelwulf spoke loudly as the bishop began to read the inscriptions on the parchment scroll. “You will promise me, Eda. You will take back this throne. Even if it takes years, you will take it back.”

“I d-do not believe you, father!” Eda tried to swallow past the lump in her throat, stammering over the sound of the ram crashing once again into the doors of the villa. They didn’t have much time before the lock would give way. “Their army is Saxon and Viking alike, it is futile to challenge them.”

“You will promise me.” Aelwulf growled, his teeth baring and spit flying from his lips. “I will not have my throne _desecrated_ by these Northmen. You will go to my sister and you will learn to _rule._ ”

“I-“ The sound of wood splitting met Eda’s ear, and she swore God’s name in vain as she turned towards the sound. They had come. “Yes-yes, I promise.”

“Do you, anointed King Aelwulf of Eoforwic,” Edric started, and Eda felt the hairs on her arms stand on end. She could not begin to understand her father’s thinking. “In the sight of God Almighty, renounce your throne and kingdom in favour of your daughter and heir, Princess Eda?”

Aelwulf breathed in, “I do.”

Edric stepped forward to Eda’s father, and Eda held her breath as Edric slipped the crown from his white hair.

“I make thee queen of Eoforwic, once ruled by your father,” He placed the heavy crown atop Eda’s fire-bitten locks, and Eda felt like the weight of the entire world was now at the top of her head. It felt wrong, like it didn’t belong there. It certainly didn’t belong on the head of a bastard. “Now, it shall be ruled by you instead. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I crown you Queen Eda. May God save and protect you, all the days of your life.”

Her father crossed his chest, and she quickly followed the action before the sound of the doors giving way echoed through the vast stone hallways of the castle. The lock had gone. Eda could hear the brutish cry of victory, and she rushed to her feet.

“Father, we must go.”

“No, no, my child. You will go.” He waved his hand, and his guard moved to lift him back to his feet and guided him back to his throne. “They still think me King, I cannot run.”

“I cannot leave you here to _die._ ” Eda sniffled, thinking of how she had left Archard in the mud like he was worth nothing more than the clothes on his back. It should be him with the crown on his head, the firstborn son of Aelwulf and the heir to Eoforwic. The one who had been learning to be a King since he could pick up a dagger.

“There is a horse, ready for you in the stable. A charger. Ride, and do not stop until you reach Hadrian’s Wall.” Aelwulf ordered, and Eda sobbed cowardly as her father’s guard grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out of the throne room.

The guard pushed her roughly, and she turned her head towards the cells and rushed down the stairs as the army of Ivar the Boneless began to storm to castle walls. Rats squeaked and dashed into the shadows as she ran across the wet floor, shoving at the door that Edvard had guarded that very morning.

She found Heolstor at the very end of the stable, a guard posted at his flank and a boy no older than twelve trembling as he strapped leather bags to the saddle of Archard’s horse. The destrier was armoured in chainmail the same colour as his midnight coat, and a black leather chamfron was strapped to his face.

“A r-robe, my Lady.” The boy held out a thick black cloak, and Eda revelled in the warmth of it as she wrapped it around her shoulders and tied it in a knot at the dip between her collarbones.

“Thank you,” Eda’s heart skipped a beat as she watched his trembling hands throw chain-link reins over the charger’s muscled neck, and prayed to whoever was listening that this boy lived to see another day. Eda swung herself onto the stallion’s armoured back, and swore to the boy, “I will avenge this.”

Eda barely had her foot in the stirrup, before the boy’s hand came down upon Heolstor’s mail-dressed rump like a crack of lightning. She held fast, gripping the course mane beneath her fingers as the destrier lurched on his hind legs and shot forward like the shaft of an arrow. Eda cast a glance over her shoulder as the boy stumbled after them, wielding a dagger, and followed them into the fray before he disappeared into the throng of people.

Heolstor’s barrel chest and thick shoulders crashed through man after man, and all Eda could do was hold onto his arched neck as he careened down the marsh that had once been the streets of Eoforwic. She could hear the snap and crack of bones beneath his hooves, the screech of swords as they met in a bloody dance. Men grabbed at her legs and pulled at Heolstor’s tail, but they moved as one mass through buildings of fire and rubble. Eda saw the flash of a silver coat and heard the rattle of a chariot, a bellow splitting the sound of murder as the King of the Northmen pointed his axe straight at her.

“Ha, Heolstor!” Eda growled, tapping her heels into his bare flank and letting his head loose as she turned him for the city gates. Though he was heavy, he was fast, and she could feel the pure energy beneath her as his legs stretched out before him, and she could hear the rumble of his hooves as he glided across the grass. “Ha, ha!”

Eda heard the unmistakable sound of arrows being loosed, and she clenched her jaw as five or six sank into the mud barely a foot behind her. The gate was nearing, broken and charred by the Vikings, but between her and the North Road were the archers atop the city’s roman walls.

Heolstor charged towards them, a mass of shadow, ears pinned back and nostrils flaring beneath the plate that shielded his face. Dread filled Eda to the core, and she held onto her brother’s horse for dear life as he thundered towards the Northmen with strides that seemed to become longer and longer. An arrow loosed, singing as the wind curled around the fletching, and another, and another, but not a single iron head scathed the destrier’s rump.

The King of the Northmen shrieked another order, but Heolstor was already beneath his archers. Eda could have sworn that she heard a skull burst beneath the horse’s feet, but she didn’t dare to look back as Heolstor crossed over the city’s threshold and onto the North Road to Caledonia.

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this is my very first work and i'm really excited to start writing again! i hope you enjoy it, and i'd super appreciate it if you left a comment!


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